Sunday, 31 August 2014

You’d be sorely mistaken if you presumed that because something is written in private, it represents the man as he truly is. All writing is a performance, whether the audience is large or a lone reader. Letters are written for the purpose of being read by a recipient: a reflection of how the poet wishes to be understood by that single reader and, as such, prone to flattery, exaggeration and lies.

Historians and biographers should be equally mistrusting of diaries. Some diaries are a place where writers wallow in sentiment or kick around ugly ideas. Others are written for eventual publication and so are about as trustworthy as a Lib Dem manifesto. The diaries of Joe Orton, the playwright, for example, are a self-serving (and frankly boring) series of sexual adventures that cast him as an adolescent Priapus. In reality, people who met him saw a thirtysomething, giggling oddity who rubbed baby lotion into his face to make it shine.

"You have worn our badge, Coal Not Dole, and you know what harassment means, as we do. Now we will pin your badge on us, we will support you. It won't change overnight, but now 140,000 miners know that there are other causes and other problems. We know about blacks and gays and nuclear disarmament and we will never be the same."

He is featured in an Observer article inspired by the film Pride, that also has interviews with Jonathan Blake and Mike Jackson from LGSM, and Siân James from the Miners' Wives' Support Group (she's now a Labour MP).

Strange how some other media think that what people who acted in the film think about LGSM and the miners' strike is more important, insightful and interesting.

The four people above all think the film Pride has - hey! - done everyone who was involved proud.

Fagburn still thinks it's notable how the movie is getting raved about in the usually union-bashing and gaybashing right-wing press - the biggest quote on the poster is the Daily Mail calling it 'Indescribably wonderful!' - and by gay journalists with the politics of a wobbly pink blancmange.

In a frank interview with the Times Magazine, the former British Lions and Wales skipper, who is set to release his second memoir, Proud, later this month, opened up about the years of torment he felt while lying to his loyal wife Jemma, the lengths he went to to keep his sexuality a secret, and how he his now finally content as an openly gay man.

* Dressed in a WRU-issued suit, he took to the pool of his home in Toulouse, armed with vodka and pills in one of a “handful” of attempts to kill himself on the night devastated Jemma finally left him;

Josh says he earns anything from a few hundred pounds a week to many thousands. He goes on working trips abroad on which he claims to earn up to £30,000 a month. He differentiates escorts from rent boys, who he says are hustlers. “They milk every penny from their clients.” He knows people who’ve been assaulted but says he never has himself. “I’ve had threats. Like, one guy threatened to slit my throat or whatever. It was over the phone, because I wouldn’t book him. I didn’t trust him when he spoke. The tone of his voice. And there’s the occasional text from some religious nut who’s like, ‘You’re going to burn for all eternity. Cleanse your soul.’ You know they’re fantasising about it. I mean, why are they Googling gay escorts?”

Between bites of his breakfast roll, he tells me the story behind “Queen”.

“I’ll be going about my business and letting my guard down and somebody will call me a ‘faggot’ on the street. All of a sudden your otherness is magnified,” he says. “One time in the [American] South at a gas station I had this group back away from me as I walked through, and in a way it was kind of awesome. It was the first time that I thought maybe this could not be so shameful and bad if I were to be like, ‘Yeah fucking move; I’m coming down the aisle’.”

“So ‘Queen’ is kind of saying that all the things you’re scared about are true and it’s me, so watch out,” he says, laughing. “And it’s also kind of playful and hopefully magnifying how ridiculous that is.”

There was certainly a “gay panic” when Hadreas released his video for “Hood” in 2012. In it he was being held tenderly in the arms of the porn star Arpad Miklos. Despite an absence of nudity, YouTube deemed the clip “not family-safe” and banned it; after widespread objection they eventually overturned their decision.

Perhaps as a result of this prejudice, when it came to writing his latest album some industry figures and friends advised him to “tone it down” to have a better chance of breaking into the mainstream. “They were basically telling me to be less gay,” he states, matter of factly. Against his better judgement, he took on their advice. “I ended up writing more universally but the music was going to be less touching and less moving for everyone who was going to listen to it,” he says. “Even though the songs were good they just didn’t feel important to me and there wasn’t the level of conviction that I like to have with everything I make. And so, I just decided to do whatever I wanted and stop worrying so specifically about how it was going to be received.”

Saturday, 30 August 2014

World Net Daily video columnist Molotov Mitchell (yeah we’d never heard of him before this either) has employed some creative logic to come to these conclusions: Dan Savage is worse than the Westboro Baptist Church, and he should fly with the church to Iraq to protest ISIS...

Doctor Who in homophobia row over lesbian lizard kiss. There’s a headline you don’t expect to read every day.

Gay rights campaigners [Eh?] are bouncing up and down with indignation after the BBC removed a scene in which a lesbian lizard woman called Madame Vastra is seen snogging her on-screen ‘wife’.

They were anxious to avoid offending Muslim viewers in the Far East. In Singapore, for instance, programmes ‘promoting’ same-sex relationships are banned. I wonder if the BBC would have scrapped the scene for fear of offending devout Christians in Sittingbourne...

Shouldn’t have thought so for a minute. Offending opponents of gay marriage is probably why they included the scene in the first place.

What puzzles me is why the producers would want to peddle a lesbian storyline in a series aimed primarily at children [Eh?].

Still, there does seem to be a statutory clause at the BBC which demands gay themes in all drama output. For the record, I couldn’t care less. But what does making the lizard lady a lesbian actually add to the show?

I’ve always thought the Doctor was asexual, not that I’ve watched Dr Who since he was played by Patrick Troughton.

No doubt they’re planning to ‘out’ him as a Friend of Dorothy in the next series, the one in which the Daleks turn their talents to soft furnishing and the Cybermen are all revealed to be closet Judy Garland fans.

A man has been jailed after he sprayed a substance believed to be ammonia at clubbers in a 'vile' attack.

Jonathan Lynn, of Worcester Park, doused three young homosexual people outside the Lightbox club with the noxious liquid in south London’s “gay district” Vauxhall.

The 31-year-old previously pleaded guilty to seven offences in relation to the two incidents which took place in the area on June 8.

He also admitted splashing the liquid on a fourth man in the group and a female passer-by before he assaulted another man, who was sprayed with the fluid after Lynn stepped on his foot as he waited in a nightclub queue.

Inner London Crown Court heard some of the victims were left with ulcers in their eyes, mouths as well as psychological problems.

Sentencing Lynn to two years and four months, Recorder David Etherington QC said: "I make this clear, this was a vile, violent, cowardly and disgraceful attack by you, but I do not find it was motivated by dislike or hate of people of homosexual orientation." ...

Friday, 29 August 2014

“We were a bunch of boys, bent on getting pissed and having a laugh. We used to dress [The Lads] up in leather clothes and S&M stuff and they loved it. It was meant to be fun: ‘Let’s drop a little acid and go nuts.’ It was controlled mayhem.”

"We were discovering our sexuality at the same time that the world was. We were at the forefront of that, making sense of gay rights.”

The Canadian-American singer-songwriter turns out to be a relaxed interviewee who is a master of the efficient one-liner (“What advice would I give to my younger self? Work on your abs”). He positively enjoys talking to groups, playing up to his audience for shock effect, remarking variously that the fad for selfies means that fans’ mobile phones should come with “deodorant sticks”, that he is fortunate not to have a huge gay following because “gay men have terrible taste in music” and that he is grateful to have recently fathered a daughter rather than a son because he would “hate to be attracted” to a son.

What? You can’t say that. I’m not even sure you can think it. “I don’t think it would happen,” he laughs in response, explaining that it’s just that “when I’m old and he is 35 and gorgeous... Well, he would probably look like me. And I would be like, ‘Oh my God! I’m falling in love with myself!’”

How the Morning Star summed up The Sun after Rupert Murdoch had bought it and revamped it in 1969.

Taken from a fascinating episode of The Reunion where ex-staffers discuss the good/bad old days at the Currant Bun.

All in hilarious; 'Weren't me, guv, honest' mode.

Much on its notorious homophobia in the 80s - though the paper's known homophobes-in-chief, Murdoch and then editor, Kelvin MacKenzie, were sadly unavailable for comment.

• Listen on BBC iPlayer. For more on the sorry, sordid saga of Murdoch's Sun read Peter Chippindale and Chris Horries' Stick It Up Your Punter! - probably the most revealing (and funniest) book ever written about British journalism.

David LeCours met the Womanizer hitmaker before her concert in Las Vegas last week (ends24Aug14) and he handed her a letter thanking her for helping him come to terms with his sexuality and giving him the courage to tell his family and friends.

On Tuesday (26Aug14), a heartwarming letter of reply, written by Spears, arrived at LeCours' home.

The singer wrote, "I was so happy to receive your letter. I was very happy to hear about how courageous you've been about being openly gay. I've always been told as long as you know in your heart that's what matter most (sic)...

"I try to follow my heart and dreams every day of my life and I think that's why I am where I am today. It means so much to me to have a fan like you who takes the time to sit and write me such a touching letter. Your letter was both touching and sincere. I wish you nothing but the best in the future and hope you keep smiling. Shine bright always, Britney Spears."

LeCours adds on Instagram.com, "I honestly have no words at all....' [Sadly, this proves untrue]... 'I just want to thank you so much for taking the time to write me back and being such an amazing inspiration to me. You mean more than anything to me and it means more than you know for responding to me. Thank you so much, I love you."

Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt got married last weekend at their magical fairy castle in France. Mazel tov! I would hate to deny anyone their happiness and tell them they can’t get married when they’re in love. Oh wait, except that is exactly what the federal government tells countless gay couples every day by refusing to recognize their rights to get married. Angie and Brad spoke out in support of gay marriage many times and even vowed they wouldn’t say their marriage vows until everyone could. Guess what, Mr. and Mrs. Pitt, not everyone can get married, so how good is your promise?

Since this video was posted on YouTube on Wednesday it has, as they say, gone viral.
Over 750,000 views now and counting.
Every gay website and blog I've seen today has run it.
It shows an American Christian mom disowning her 19/20 year-old son, Daniel, because he's gay, telling him to move out of their home, and then his dad appears and attacks him.
It originally appeared on Reddit, posted by Rythymnight who says he is Daniel's boyfriend.
It's awful.
Really awful
It's also awful that there have been so many anti-gay horror stories in the gay media recently that have turned out to be hoaxes, I wondered if this one was really real.I've recorded a dozen of these that have been run as fact and then corrected as fictions, everything from faked 'gaybashings' to teen suicides that never actually happened.
Hard to believe some (gay) people are so sick.
This one does look real, and not staged, but why was the boy filming all of it, why was he filming it in the first place, why don't we see anyone's face, and if his mother says she's known Daniel was gay since he was a little boy why is she only turning against him now?
I feel pretty shitty for being sceptical about this - things like this certainly happen - but can you blame me with the gay media's past record?

So South Yorkshire police did everything it could to stop the Times reporting the Rotherham sex abuse scandal, yet this month the very same force had been "working with a media outlet" to publicise a raid on Cliff Richard's house. What's the lesson from this? That the media is only tolerated if it can help get a celebrity conviction?

The mishandling of the Cliff operation can't even be put down to a rush for justice. It was a full 18 months ago that we remember police sources starting to brief journalists that they had Cliff Richard in their sights. Hacks had even started checking out Heathrow whenever Cliff entered the country, to see if anything was happening. So, it's unlikely this raid was done on a whim.

What started out sounding like over-eager gossip is now looking more like the police's attempt to get the media to help build the case. With the BBC's coverage of the Cliff Richard raid, they may have got their wish. But all they've managed to succeed in doing so far is making us feel bad for a man who released Livin' Doll and lends his house to Tony Blair.

He celebrated the success of The Boy Friend by redecorating his kitchen and was seemingly nonchalant about the royalties that rolled in. “I’ve always appreciated a good vodka martini. Now I can afford to buy as many as I can drink.” Within three years of its first performance, the musical had made him so financially secure that he was advised he need never work again. Yet in 1964 Divorce Me Darling!, his sequel to The Boy Friend, received its premiere. It was, however, less triumphant, with the journalist Bernard Levin (who would later join The Times) calling it “relentlessly incomprehensible”.

Wilson, a stocky man often dressed immaculately in Savile Row suits, had an eccentric side. For a time he sported a droopy moustache modelled on one he had seen in a Van Gogh picture “because I thought it went rather well with a hat I had bought”. When not working he would venture abroad or swap recipes among his circle of gastronomic friends (he was a talented cook). A gay man, for decades he enjoyed a bachelor lifestyle but was later joined in his South Kensington flat by a partner, Chak Yui, who survives him.

The poster – which features the two of the region’s most prominent 19th century cultural figures – is designed to promote a gay club in Almaty, one of the most liberal cities in Central Asia. The club, Studio 69, sits at the corner of streets named after Pushkin and Kurmangazy...

August is the height of The Silly Season - that summer time when the amount of real news hits an annual low.

Though you might have noticed there's rather a lot of really awful and important things going on in the world right now (Private Eye have called it The Killy Season).

So how do newspapers pad out their pages? With trivia (Pregnant panda not pregnant), tittle-tattle (Non-entity in CBB meltdown), endless lists (11 Things You Already Knew About Kate Bush), pretending a nothing is 'a thing' (Legroom Rage!), nicking stuff off the internet (6 funniest tweets about #GBBO) etc etc etc...

Alternatively they just run gay-related wire stories, seemingly picked at random, that are of no real interest to their readers.

Poster for gay club in Kazakstahn is controversial!

Gay man in Chile comes out!
One is clearly a bad thing, the other is clearly a good thing.But whilst I'd love to think this was a sign of how much The Guardian and The Independent want to tell people what's going down in the international LGBT community, it's not.

It's so lazy and patronising it suggests the exact opposite; they don't really care about us.

Wednesday, 27 August 2014

IT'S not just people doing the Ice Bucket Challenge that are chilling themselves for charity - this brave teenager raised hundreds of pounds for charity by stripping naked on the top of Mount Kilimanjaro.

Love is Strange is an intermittently wonderful new film about an ageing Manhattan couple who get hitched almost 40 years into their relationship, only for their suddenly straitened circumstances to force them to live apart for the first time. It’s a gentle and perceptive comedy-drama, so it’s rather a shock to find that the US ratings board, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), has given it an R rating.

Short of the dreaded NC-17, which prohibits anyone under that age from seeing a film, this is the severest classification a movie can receive in the US. The R denotes that a picture contains material unsuitable for the under-17s, but stops short of banning that audience. Children can still be accompanied to an R movie by an adult, as I first discovered when I watched the violent horror-comedy Scream 2 in New York accompanied by the sound of a child several rows behind me begging his mother for more Reese’s Pieces.

The MPAA’s ratings website insists that several instances of profanity in Love Is Strange have earned the film its rating. But a likelier reason must be that its main characters are both men. They are played by two seasoned performers, John Lithgow and Alfred Molina. These actors are not required to enjoy anything more passionate on screen than a peck on the cheek and a cosy (but fully clothed) cuddle. But it is precisely the undemonstrative normality of their relationship that seems to have inflamed the notoriously prickly and conservative ratings board...

We could at least admire the MPAA’s honesty if it admitted that Love is Strange has been guilty of “excessive normalising of a loving homosexual relationship with no punishment or prolonged unhappiness for either party”. Mainstream cinema has tended to like its gay characters either tormented (Brokeback Mountain), comical (The Birdcage), dead (Milk) or dying (Philadelphia). The couple in Love is Strange fall into none of those categories. Except for an instance of homophobia that forces one of them into unemployment, their sexuality passes without mention. It is only the MPAA that has made it an issue. The BBFC has gone for the slightly softer option of a 15 rating, again because of a few instances of strong language, though this also feels a tad harsh. I don’t recall the air turning blue when I saw Love is Strange at the Berlin Film Festival back in February.

Well, yes and no.

The idea that the MPAA or the BBFC took umbrage at the humdrum normality of the gay relationship in Love Is Strange - ie how closely it approximates to a sexless mundane straight marriage - something argued by several gay journalists, is just plain daft.

An inversion of what is the culturally acceptable invert, if you will.

Thankfully, it seems Penguin are not going with the original front cover quote from that ridiculous berk Russell Brand, a man with the political acumen of the Chuckle Brothers, who dubbed OJ; 'Our generation's Orwell'!

This is about

In his weekly Guardian column, Owen writes; 'The confines of acceptable political opinion are narrow and zealously guarded, and those presented as outsiders are actually the establishment in undiluted form.'

How true, Owen, how true...

PS Did 38% of Guardian journalists go to Oxbridge? Were half of leading newspaper journalists privately educated? Press Gazette.

Update: Statistics should provoke Britain's media into prolonged period of self-reflection. They probably won't, since 54% of top 100 media professionals went to private schools, Owen writes in Thursday's Guardian.

In 2003, Manchester Pride took over the running of what had been primarily a successful fundraising event for LGBT and HIV/AIDS charities in the Manchester area since the late 1980s.

Manchester is among the most unique of Pride events in that it culminates in a four-day celebration after a month of "Fringe" events.

In recent years though, the focus has moved from a community-led and focused event with an emphasis on fundraising to a more commercial event where charity donations have fallen over the last three years. Indeed this year the ticket cost was stated as contributing towards the delivery of the event with no donation to the Community Fund. LGBT and HIV/AIDS charities have suffered from this decrease in funding from Manchester's primary fundraising event. Charities that benefited in the past from Pride donations have seen increased demands on resources and massive decreases in funding.

There have been concerns at every level about how Manchester Pride is now run - excessive ticket prices, spiralling costs, lack of financial support, right of way issues, disability access issues, lack of transparency and openness from organisers, lack of opportunity for community groups to get more involved, exclusion of those most in need or support. The list goes on.

We now ask for a public meeting with Manchester Pride, Manchester City Council and Greater Manchester Police to discuss and hopefully resolve the issues mentioned above. Manchester Pride should be an event run by our LGBT community for the LGBT community and not by a board of unelected trustees that has no true community representation.

If over seven million people watched the programme, then only six people complaining is statistically insignificant.

It's actually less than one in a million.

Given those odds, a monkey could have dialled Ofcom by mistake.

Probably.

Further, some people will be offended and complain about anything.

Just take a look at Twitter, it won't take a minute to find someone who's OUTRAGED and DISGUSTED by any gaiety on TV, or, say, the sandwich they just bought for lunch.

Only a provincial pearl-clutching prissy panic-mongerer would think this non-story is newsworthy.

But that's Gay Star News for you - it's like a gay Daily Mail written by naff 12 year-olds.

Update: Ofcom responds; We don't give a fuck about this either. 'Having assessed the complaints, we can confirm that they do not raise issues warranting further investigation.'Our rules do not discriminate between scenes featuring opposite sex and same sex couples.'
Update 2: Compare this OUTRAGE to the 600 people complained to the BBC about that baked alaska thing on Great British Bake Off!

Tuesday, 26 August 2014

I'm really getting tired of companies, politicians, donors and other entities using their support of LGBT rights -- something much easier to do these days -- as a way to pose as progressive, often as a PR move to blunt criticism of a bad record or even nefarious actions. And it's time that LGBT activists stop letting them get away with it. At this point, many of these entities need us more than we need them. Let's demand more.

The latest is Burger King, which only weeks ago unveiled "The Proud Whopper" to support LGBT pride -- receiving accolades from many LGBT activists -- but now isfleeing to Canada, buying up Tim Hortons, following other American companies engaged in so-called tax inversions, all to avoid paying U.S. taxes. Who cares if Burger King wraps its Whopper in the rainbow if the company is hurting the American economy, American taxpayers and American workers, including LGBT workers?

The show is a significant one for more reasons than simply audience numbers and critical acclaim. Created by Steven Levitan and Christopher Lloyd, the team behind Frasier, it’s a show that is pushing television boundaries and, in its own quiet way, changing political viewpoints. Right wing conservatives, including Mitt Romney and his wife, are said to be fans and, in a recent survey, Republicans ranked the show third in a list of their top 15 shows, while Democrats didn’t rank it at all. All rather surprising, given the inclusion of a gay couple with a baby as one of the family units.

“This is probably a little overwrought, but I do actually think the writers are making the world a better place,” Burrell says earnestly. “It’s one of my favourite things about the show. I love it when I talk to conservatives and they’re describing all three couples, and they never mention that one of them is gay. That’s the brilliance of the writing. In a completely unaggressive, apolitical way, they are showing this couple as completely normal dealing with ordinary stuff. The banality of it is the most revolutionary thing.

“I think if you turned around and asked that same conservative person how they felt about gay marriage, that probably hasn’t changed for them, but the seed has been planted none the less. It’s progress and it’s the coolest thing.”

Monday, 25 August 2014

Morrissey has compiled the track-listing for the forthcoming Best of the Ramones CD/LP which is due for release by Sire-Rhino. Morrissey has also chosen the sleeve image (above). Morrissey is thankful to the Ramones management for this invitation.

Porn for women has always had women’s sexuality - or perceived lack of it - as the punchline.

What turns women on, we are told, is men doing the ironing. Men taking the bins out. Men emptying the dishwasher. Maybe while shirtless.

Hilarious.

The truth is far more interesting. Because, while 'lesbian porn' has long done a roaring trade among straight men, it seems a growing number of women are turning to man-on-man action to get them going. Indeed, there's an entire subculture of women who believe that, in the words of one online viewer, “there's nothing better than watching two handsome guys f******.” *

In a world where straight women from Judy Garland to the fictional Bridget Jones are painted as the gays' best friend, it's a little surprising...

“For us, death is stronger than life, it pulls like a wind through the dark, all our cries burlesqued in joyless laughter; and with the garbage of liveliness stuffed down us until our guts burst bleeding green, we go screaming round the world, dying, in our rented rooms, nightmare hotels, eternal homes of the transient heart.”